


red for the new year

by PunkHazard



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 18:13:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hong Kong's Shatterdome is practically empty this time of year; only a skeleton crew to keep it running, with just enough people to get Crimson Typhoon battle-ready and deployed for emergencies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	red for the new year

Hong Kong's Shatterdome is practically empty this time of year; only a skeleton crew to keep it running, with just enough people to get Crimson Typhoon battle-ready and deployed for emergencies, unlikely as they are. That only numbers about two dozen people, all of them close enough to the Weis to be dressed in their colors. Half of them techies from LOCCENT, half of them on the repair crews, all of them certified to fly Blackhawks.

The triplets greet Tendo in the hangar.

Actually, they greet Alison and his son in the hangar; Tendo would later confess to feeling somewhat neglected, though watching Jin and Hu make faces at the baby Alison plonks in Cheung's arms makes up for it. He's too young to really understand what people making faces really means, but he does grab Hu by the nostril and twist, hard, bringing the pilot to his knees until Jin pries the baby's hand off his nose.

When the triplets surround Alison and very conspicuously begin to turn on the charm, all cocky grins and extravagant flattery, Tendo whisks his wife and son to the mess hall, where the crew's pushed the benches against the walls in favor of three round tables large enough to seat at least ten each. One of the long tables has been pushed to the front of the canteen, its surface lined with photographs-- wallet-sized, photobooth strips, framed pictures and even some properly-sized portraits. Plates of nicely-arranged food have been set out alongside. 

Mako's sitting on the steps across from the kitchen, wisely staying out of the way as crewmembers dart across the complex with plates, utensils and heaping dishes of new year's fare. "Commander Choi," Mako greets as Tendo approaches, standing up and giving him a polite bow. "Happy new year."

"Miss Mori," he replies with a sunny grin, "you've met Alison."

It's not that Mako is unfriendly, but she's always been slow to smile. Still, when it shows, it's heartfelt and inviting. "Welcome to Hong Kong."

"It's a pleasure to be here," Alison answers warmly, and promptly forgets Tendo's existence as Mako (politely) begins to interrogate her about their son, their new digs in Hong Kong, their long stint in Lima. Tendo drifts toward the triplets instead, all three of them now playfully surrounding one of the technicians trying to bring a plate of food unmolested to its designated table.

Jin reaches for a scrap of some leafy green vegetable, but Xiao-yu slaps his hand away with merciless precision; he retreats to a simultaneous bark of laughter from both brothers. When Cheung notices Tendo watching, he manages to pull them all away from their current mission, attention spans blessedly short, before they make their way toward Tendo instead. 

「You busy, Choi?」

「Your bowtie should be red, Choi.」

「Married life is treating you a bit too well, Choi.」

"I didn't understand half of that," Tendo answers indignantly, one hand self-consciously settling on his waist, "but as a matter of fact, being married has been _great_."

"I said," Jin drawls, whipping a red ribbon out of his pocket and tying it around Tendo's arm, "you should be wearing red for the new year. You never learned this in San Francisco?"

"I learned nothing in San Francisco. Where's the Marshal?"

"In his office. He intimidates the kitchen staff. You should come play a game with us," quips Hu, loudly enough so most of the crew has to turn away to hide their smiles, "before our crew abuses us any more for being hungry and bored."

"If you stopped eating everything you touched," Jie-wen scolds as she passes by with a steaming bowl of soup, "we might let you help."

"She's got a point, boys." He tugs at the ribbon for a second, then looks at Jin. "Do you just keep a bunch of these in your pocket for everyone who's not wearing your lucky colors?"

"Just a few. Besides," he explains, "it isn't _our_ lucky color, it's _China's_. Everyone wears red for the new year."

"But he was too scared to put one on the Marshal."

"Two on two," Cheung cuts in before his younger brothers can start a fight with each other, "or we can play HORSE."

"Horse is next year, today we play 'SNAKE'." Jin scuffs his boots on the Shatterdome floor, then nudges Tendo's shoes with the toe of his. "No one is wearing the right shoes for a real game."

"You three," Tendo scoffs as he follows them anyway, "just want to see me embarass myself."

* * *

By the time the plates are being cleared away, Tendo's been staring long enough at the makeshift shrine at the front of the room for Jin to nudge him on the arm and discreetly mutter, "Everyone else went back home to see their families. Incense is a fire hazard, so anyone who wants to lights it outside."

Tendo nods, downs the last of his tea and then looks at the triplets. It stands to reason that a bunch of families in Hong Kong would have only one or two survivors after Reckoner, and that some of them would have joined up with the PPDC. "What about you three?"

"We got everything done before you arrived." Cheung gives Tendo a look that says he deserved to arrive late because only someone with horrifically bad planning skills would schedule themselves to be moving around on New Year's Eve. "You were late, so we dug up a picture of your yeye and set him up with everyone else so he wouldn't miss dinner. We know you're Catholic, but we figured he wouldn't mind."

"No, yeah he--" Tendo swipes his sleeve over his eyes and makes a show of looking around the canteen for his son (who's surrounded by a cluster of red-clad engineers shaking a set of keys in front of his face and cooing). "He was Buddhist, yeah. I appreciate it, guys."

"Isn't Buddhism about reincarnation?" Mako leans over from Jin's other side for the teapot, tops off his cup and Hu's before filling up her own. "Offerings to the ancestors sounds like it's part of something else."

"You got it." Tendo jumps in before Hu does-- his grandfather hadn't been able to teach him much before he'd passedconsidering how much time he'd spent away from home, but he'd done the research on his own time, after his scheduled relocation to Hong Kong. "Ancestors watching over you from on high is Taoist and Confucian."

"But if he's reincarnated," Mako says matter-of-factly, "then he can't be watching."

"Aren't Buddhism and Shinto all mixed up in Japan, too? I imagine it's something like that, Miss Mori." 

Mako mulls it over for a second, then turns to the triplets. "But Shinto and Buddhism do not contradict each other."

Jin pretends to be offended, looking around the table at his brothers. "I think Mako's trying to undermine our culture."

"I'm not!"

"That is very cold, Mako." 

"After we invited you into our Shatterdome for the new year, you hurt us like this?"

Mako glances across the canteen for help, to where Pentecost is bent over a sheaf of papers with one of the LOCCENT operators, their dishes and utensils forgotten. He looks up, as if sensing her gaze, but quickly looks away when he sees the triplets on every side of her, like tigers prowling around the edges of a campfire. Mako sighs, turns back to the onslaught and indignantly tells them, "You three are horrible. And if I remember correctly, atheists."

"You can be atheist and Buddhist at the same time," Cheung says, a bit defensively. "Besides, for a lot of us, it's more culture than religion."

"And you should know by now, Mako." Jin laughs, rocking forward to rest his elbows on the table. "We are Chinese. We cover all of our bases."

* * *

Mako chucks the peel of her orange at Jin's face when he steals a slice of her fruit, flips it into the air and catches it in his mouth. Hu leans back on the couch and props his feet up on the table of the pilots' lounge, a small recreational area converted from one of dozens of spare former dorms in the Shatterdome. Tendo laughs, then stands. "I'm gonna turn in early. Happy new year, boys. Miss Mori."

"Wait--" Hu snags Tendo's sleeve as he passes by, then drags him back, stuffing a bright red envelope into his back pocket. "Put it in your kid's college fund. Happy new year, Choi."

"You don't have t--"

" _Happy new year_ ," Cheung says firmly, planting a foot on his ass and shoving him lightly toward the door. "Good night, Commander Choi."

"Just remind him that it's Uncles Cheung, Jin and Hu that're the fun ones," Jin calls after time as the door shuts.

「You too, Mako.」 Cheung flicks another red envelope across the table, this one heavy and thick. 「We had a look at some of your files, and we remember last time construction stalled, it was because you were waiting on parts, so.」

「Thank you,」 Mako says simply, too used to being yelled down whenever she tries to refuse a favor to try again. 

Jin stands up, steps over the low table between their two sets of couches and sits down next to her. 「Open it now, I want to see your face!」

She dumps out a pile of receipts, all of them with prices redacted but the parts names and numbers still intact. There are notes on several of them-- _were you trying to save money by going for the 4500XT? this new model is faster, it's worth it_ ; and _the 2023 is 1500Y cheaper than the 2024 and still compatible, you won't need such a fancy elbow hinge, take it from us_ , and even _we asked the russians about this, it was discontinued & all parts destroyed after g.d. went down the first time so this is the bootleg version... don't worry, we checked the quality for ourselves_.

Mako never really did get very excited for candy stores as a child, but she dives for her tablet to check off 'required items' on her parts list, trying with no success to dial back a wildly unprofessional grin. 「This is half the list,」 she says wonderingly, 「our budget has been tight lately, how much did this--」

「You have no idea how much money we had left over from the 'glory days'.」 Jin snorts, pushing his hand through the cluster of paper and picking up a random strip. 「Don't sweat it, brat. Just get these ugly old parts out of _our_ hangar ASAP.」

Hu says sleepily, already slumped against his eldest brother, 「We should go to bed, too. Long day tomorrow.」

「You're going to be very busy?」 Mako asks.

Cheung answers, 「If you'll miss us that much, we're watching the fireworks in the bay tomorrow. You can come if you want, but don't tell the Marshal.」

「He will be in meetings all day. I would like to come with you.」

「Perfect.」

* * *

The first taste Mako gets of being in a Jaeger-- that doesn't involve a VR headset, anyway-- she's braced against Cheung's shoulders in Crimson Typhoon's conn-pod in the middle of Victoria Harbour, peering under his arm as Jin and Hu trudge away from shore. She has one of their spare helmets on, and passes the time scanning numbers on the HUD in favor of the darkened screen.

「You can't see much at night,」 she observes in Chinese, to three low chuckles bouncing around in the empty space of her helmet, 「what does the small sonar do?」

「Mako-chan learning even on holiday,」 Jin laughs, splicing the honorific into his sentence the way they've always done. (They'd tried giving her a nickname, years ago, but it never stuck. Mako likes her own better anyway.)

「The big one gives us a general direction, the smaller one gives us a more precise distance of objects in the water. Radars are on the other side.」 Cheung toggles a switch, dims the HUD and pulls up a view of the bay instead. 「The display throws off our depth perception when things are farther away, so we're usually relying totally on sonar until we engage with a kaiju. Numbers are easier to understand than cameras sometimes.」

Hu says as he and Jin turn their heads to give her a look at the Hong Kong skyline, city lit up even more than usual, 「Right now, we just need it because there're too many boats in the water.」 After a few seconds, he adds with a teasing lilt to his voice, 「Thought you'd know that.」

「Blue Spark is a different OS entirely,」 Mako answers testily, to three simultaneous snorts. 「I don't have time to memorize Crimson Typhoon's every detail while I'm working on restoration.」

Cheung moves to make room on his platform, reaches sideways and smacks her on the helmet before shunting her forward to stand in front of him so she won't have to contort herself for a view of their screen. 「But you have time to go on a joyride with us. I didn't know our girl meant so little to you.」

「For someone who grew up fighting on the streets,」 Mako retorts, 「you are very good at making me feel guilty like a grandmother would.」

「We've been telling him that for years!」

「Yeah, you always take his side unless he's targeting you. See how it feels, Mako-chan.」

「If you two ever start getting the upper hand,」 she says airily, 「I'll start taking your side. I like to win.」

「We're stopping here,」 Cheung interrupts as they reach the point marked out on the map. He rests one hand on their release latches, the other on a locking mechanism. Jin and Hu move without even looking over their shoulders, both of them bending at the waist, lowering one of Crimson Typhoon's hands to hover flat over the water. Cheung locks Crimson Typhoon's joints in place, then unhitches all their harnesses. 「Meet and greet for an hour, then we climb back up and watch the fireworks.」

Mako struggles out of her helmet and hands it over to Jin when he extends his hand for it. He pops open the storage compartment inside their conn-pod and switches the helmet with a small stack of folded clothes. She asks, 「You do this every year?」

「Contract with the city,」 Hu explains curtly as his brother tosses him a pair of dress pants, a shirt, red tie and blazer. Cheung takes his without complaint and all three of them strip out of their drivesuits to change while Mako explores the conn-pod, dragging her fingers over the cool metal walls and familiarizing herself with the switches. Some are worn, others are nearly intact; logically, the Weis wouldn't have the luxury of being careful with buttons when fighting a kaiju. 

Their shirts are the same size, same style and color, so they don't bother squabbling over who gets which. Cheung takes his younger brothers' ties, knots them properly and then loops each one over their heads. The blazers are a different story; Hu claims the pinstripes, leaving his brothers to argue over the remaining two jackets, one a solid gray and the other black. 

By the time they've pulled on fancy polished shoes and checked each other for any out-of-place articles of clothing, Mako's already waiting by the hatch, hand on the exit lever. She waves them ahead after a look out the door, at the cluster of boats floating around the Jaeger's hand and the people pressed pressed to the railings of their vessels, most of them with their cameras out, heads craning up to try and catch a glimpse of the pilots.

「Good luck,」 she tells them with a wicked grin. 

「One time we climbed onto a boat to make things easier,」 Hu tells her with a haunted expression, 「and the conductor started driving away and wouldn't let us back onto Typhoon until we threatened to jump ship and swim.」

「Maybe you should bring security next time.」

「Other than cultists,」 Jin says cheerfully (he enjoyed that incident; his brothers did not), 「everyone's pretty harmless. And we can handle cultists.」

「Have fun,」 Mako laughs, knowing their fans probably won't appreciate her presence (she isn't dressed for a photo op anyway). 「I will stay here.」

* * *

By the time the triplets clamber back up, using hand- and foot-holds embedded along the edges of Crimson Typhoon's armor, Mako's already located the stash of snacks their crew had snuck into the conn-pod, knowing they'd be dragged around the city all day and in the bay until late at night. She's working through a bag of cheese-flavored chips and a level of Angry Birds when Cheung tumbles back into the cockpit with a curse about how little traction dress shoes have.

Hu's next, and he turns around to offer Jin a hand before all three of them are dusting off their jackets and shrugging out of them in favor of casual civilian clothing. 

Cheung tosses Mako a harness and cables, along with another backpack full of packed dinners to bring up as his brothers each stick a hand back into a drivesuit gauntlet, raising Crimson Typhoon's hand up to the hatch. 「Clip yourself somewhere secure,」 he tells her, dimming the Jaeger's beacon so it doesn't blind her. Mako complies, hanging on to one of Typhoon's fingers while she's lifted far above the conn-pod.

The brothers scale the arm once it's been locked into place, Hu and Cheung each with two jackets. Hu tosses one to Mako (and makes a note to himself to take a picture of her wearing it to send to the Russians) while Cheung wrestles Jin into the last one-- much more carefully than he usually does, given that they're twenty stories over water still churning with boats full of excited spectators.

「One more minute,」 Mako announces, pointedly looking over the water at the convention center where an enormous clock has begun to display in ticks the final fifty seconds before eight o'clock, and the scheduled start of the event. Jin clips himself to the same anchor Mako did and settles on her left; Hu fastens his carabiner to Jin's belt and drags the pack of food in front of him. Cheung plops himself down on Mako's right and reaches behind her to secure himself to the same loop. 

「We need to talk,」 she says at the ten-second mark. Hu and Jin look at her, but Cheung just nods as Hu passes him a sandwich, which he sets aside for the moment. 

「After the show,」 he tells her, 「we won't be able to hear you if you try while it's still going.」

「Five,」 Jin interrupts, elbowing both her and Hu on the arm, 「four!」

「Three,」 Mako grudgingly chimes in, along with both remaining triplets, 「two--」

The roar from far below is audible even over Jin's yell; Mako even imagines that exuberant _One!_ might carry some echoes from shore. Cheung reaches into Mako's field of vision to snag the waistband of Jin's pants as his younger brother rises up on both knees, pumping his arms in the air and dragging Hu a few inches forward by their connecting strap. Hu laughs, stretches his legs out in front of him and tugs Jin back down as five streaks of light erupt from the city, then seem to fade. 

The hollow whistling from launched explosives don't bring any pleasant memories to mind for Mako; reasons she'd always steered clear of Hong Kong's new year celebrations, and out of LA come July 4th, and away from Japan during Obon, and--

Fireworks are nothing like missiles, really. The triplets have seen more than their share of kaiju attacks, squadrons of jets swooping in and wrecking themselves, and they've beaten the hurricane. Fifteen times. Mako can barely hear herself think over the noise, fireworks launched before the previous one's even fizzled out, but she doesn't hear Onibaba's screech in the back of her mind and Crimson Typhoon's palm is solid and cool, the air crisp but tinged with smoke.

Hu and Jin are leaning forward, grinning wide. Hu smacks Jin hard on the arm when a vaguely Crimson Typhoon-shaped arrangement bursts into existence; Jin grabs Mako's shoulder and shakes it, yelling into her ear. When she glances at Cheung, he's not even looking at the fireworks-- just at his brothers, with the calmest expression she's ever seen on his face. 

When he notices her looking, Cheung wraps his arm over the back of her neck and pulls her head against his shoulder, leaning down to talk into her ear so he won't have to yell over the fireworks. 「You okay?」

「Yes,」 Mako answers cheerfully (the triplets can be overbearing sometimes, but she'll never grow tired of being big-brothered), 「Thank you for taking me out today. I know you're very busy and the Marshal will yell at you when we get back.」

Cheung laughs, ruffles her hair and lets her go. 「We're letting you take the fall for this one.」

* * *

「The United Nations will probably pull support for the PPDC soon,」 Mako says, her own voice muffled in her ears after the cacophany of a show. She tugs lightly on the shell, as if to try and stretch her ears back into functionality, digs her pinky into the canal and wiggles her jaw, to no avail. Resignedly: 「The Marshal has been having difficulty securing funding, and many organizations are backing out to fund the wall.」

「I haven't heard about walls from, you know.」 Hu says around a bite of some chicken, and he points up, at the moon but probably indicating the higher-ups in their chain of command. 

「China knows walls don't work so well,」 Jin adds around a pair of disposable chopsticks, still wrestling his own dinner box. 「We tried it two thousand years ago.」

「My point,」 Mako continues, 「is that the PPDC is in the process of making the transition from a government program to an independent agency.」

「Our sponsors can keep us running for a while even if the UN backs out.」 Cheung doesn't seem worried, and that puts both brothers immediately at ease, though Mako catches their simultaneous glances in his direction. 「There's not much we can do for the other domes, though.」

「We'll be fine for food,」 Jin adds as he finally pops his container open. 「Might have to scrounge a bit for repairs.」

「Unless,」 Hu drawls, 「you're implying that we might abandon ship as soon as we stop getting paid, 'cause we're gonna get really offended if your opinion of us is that low.」

「Sorry, sorry. I told _Sensei_ , but he said that he wanted to know for sure that if you stayed, you were doing it willingly.」 Instead, Mako doesn't say, out of some misguided sense of duty to an organization that had barely wanted them and now probably couldn't survive without them. 「He says that regardless of your decision, he's grateful for your service and will support you to the best of his ability.」

Cheung snorts, puffs out his cheeks and tries not to look flattered. 「We signed up to fight. We'll see it through to the end, whatever it is. You speak to Rogue's crew yet?」

「They said the same thing.」

「There're eight Jaegers left,」 Hu says matter-factly. 「No one would back out now who hasn't already. That's all you came out here with us for?」

「That's all.」 

The triplets' trash from their quick dinner seems to have disappeared, probably stuffed back into the pack Hu had sent up in favor of a bottle of tea, each of them drinking precisely a third of it until Jin shakes the last few drops out, screws the cap back on and throws it in with the rest of their debris. Hu offers Mako an unopened bottle, which she takes happily. 

After a few moments of silence, Jin says, 「You could've told us at base.」

「But then I would have missed a joyride in your Jaeger.」

Hu chimes in next, a smug, 「Remember that time the Marshal wouldn't believe us when we told him she was 'a bit devious'?」

「I was twelve,」 Mako says curtly, turning a focused glare on Hu. 「My adoption papers were still being processed. You made me cry when you said that.」

「Yeah, we take it back. You're literally the devil.」

「He apologized to us, though. Seventeenth birthday. After he finished yelling.」 Jin wraps his arms over his knees and grins at Mako from behind his elbows, deepening his voice and scrunching his face into a stern grimace. 「Rangers. I hope it isn't too late to retract the reprimand I issued in the summer of whatever-year-that-was. I understand now.」

「He did _what_?」

「Jin was in shock for an hour,」 Cheung tells her, laughing, 「you know when you snuck off with that kid who was delivering a message to us from Liu?」

「I wanted to see the city on my birthday,」 Mako grouses, 「and besides, I could have killed him fifteen different ways if he'd tried anything.」

Mako knows Cheung leaves off the _He's your father and he loves you_ part that he always seems to imply but never say, but he only offers her a half-hearted reprimand instead. 「Don't make the Marshal worry so much. We always get in trouble for enabling you.」

「That was four years ago. I outgrew it.」

All three Weis roll their eyes. Mako may have learned to control her temper and her rebellious streak has calmed to irrepressible stubbornness instead, but all of them have been participants-- willing and otherwise-- in some of her ideas. It's only fortunate that she doesn't usually come up with anything worse than what the triplets have already tried for themselves at some point or another. 

Jin rests his elbow on her shoulder, face obnoxiously close to hers. 「Of course you did.」

「Speaking of the Marshal,」 Hu cuts in, digging their PPDC pins out of the smaller compartment of their backpack and tossing each brother their own, 「what are we, if we're not military?」

「He's been working on the tagline,」 Mako replies, expression pained and vaguely embarrassed, 「we're going to be a 'Resistance'.」

「That's kind of cool. He hasn't been wearing his pins lately, has he?」

「No.」 Mako pauses for a second, then unclips her own insignia from the lapel of her jumpsuit. 「I should take it off, too.」

「Any boats behind us?」 Jin asks.

Cheung adjusts the strap keeping him anchored to Crimson Typhoon's palm, pushes himself to his feet and moves to the edge of their makeshift platform, looking over the side away from Hong Kong. 「No view from behind a Jaeger.」

Jin and Hu hand their pins over to Cheung, who attaches the clasps to form a short chain. 「You want to do your own, Mako?」

Mako scrambles to her feet, unclips her 'biner from the anchor, and shifts it to Cheung's instead before joining him. 「Three,」 she says, flashing a smile over her shoulder, then the scrap of metal in her hand, 「two, one.」

The pins actually whistle as they disappear into the darkness. Mako watches Cheung snap off an incredibly sloppy salute after them (she hasn't seen it in years; that rebellion against authority lost its purpose once the triplets became pilots), catches Jin and Hu doing the same in her peripheral vision, and gives them a questioning look.

「The U.N. was never on our side anyway,」 Cheung spits. 「Half of them on the Atlantic, they don't know what it's like.」

「One less insignia to keep track of,」 Jin laughs, tapping the PPDC crest on the shoulder of his jacket. 「Now it's just this and our personal one.」

「All the remaining Jaegers will be relocated to Hong Kong,」 Mako says. 「Cherno Alpha should be arriving within the month.」

「Aah,」 Jin sighs, practically euphoric, 「they watched us freeze in Vladivostok, I can't wait to see the Kaidanovksys deal with this heat.」


End file.
